When Winter Falls
by Curione
Summary: [Short companion fic to Sunshine cannot bleach the snow. Read that first or this fic won't make sense.] Elsa will always wait at the end of the world. Just like she promised.


The white bits that flew frenzied through the sky were not snow. They might have looked like the beautiful frozen water that was the core of Elsa's power, but they couldn't have been any more different than fire was to ice. Her powers could not command this psuedo-snow, even though it flew in the wind just like snow would in a blizzard. After all, she would have commanded it to stop a long time ago if it had been within her power to.

She didn't have a lot of time. If she did, she wouldn't be so nervous now, having tried and tested what she was going to do many more times than she had. But she had to work with what she had, and what she had was maybe ten, fifteen minutes left.

The world had burned in the end. Having witnessed the fall and rise of humanity over the course of the years, she supposed that this wasn't that surprising. Humans, normal humans at least, all had such fire burning in them. Her sister had been one with so much life, so much fire. It had been warmth, joy and love. But so many humans on the Earth as time passed... well, too much of a good thing in excess usually ended up as a bad thing. And so, the world had ignited and burned itself to the end of the world.

Sometimes, when Elsa was lonely enough, she would close her eyes and imagine the screams of whole cities through the night, till it became dawn and then everything was once again silent.

Of course, Elsa also thought of Anna. It was usually when her hands stilled, and she was threatened with the wallowing depths of despair and uncertainty. She would remind herself again what she was doing all this for. Of _whom_ she was doing this for.

It had been fifty long years since that last cycle with Anna, and more than two hundred since Anna had made that odd request that was now Elsa's sole reason for living. She sometimes wondered if it would have been better to have just told Anna was had been happening that last cycle. To show her the world that had begun the sprint towards its destruction. But too used being the sheltering elder sister even after all the years she had lived, she hadn't been able to bring herself to.

And for once, Anna hadn't pushed back. She'd actually listened for once. The jury was still in for whether that had actually been a good thing or not.

But what had been done was done. And the last fifty years, Elsa had spent making preparations to fulfill Anna's wish.

It had been the furthest thing from easy. Finding out if she could freeze herself and Anna together had been one thing hard enough to do. But she had to do it amidst battles for control over her company of which provided the money for her research; amidst nosy governments trying to utilize her power for their own gain; amidst cries for her to share her cryogenic technology despite her explaining many times that it wouldn't work the same way as it did for Anna the way others did, no matter how many times she'd endeavored to do so through the years.

There were many things she would like to have done. She would have liked to more time to test her theories, definitely. She even would have liked to have awoken Anna, maybe for one last cycle. Not in the chaotic world towards the end of course, but maybe some safe corner of the world where they could live in peace for a few more years, and she might have, had she the money to build one artificially; but all the money had gone into ensuring that the machine had enough energy to last even through a power outage of several decades.

And perhaps, she would even have liked to have prevented the end of the world and save herself this current trouble. She had actually devoted a few years to that, before realizing that it had been a lost cause, and that the world was just moving closer to its predestined expiry date.

Even as powerful as she was, she couldn't have prevented something like that.

But, now, as she looked around the silent apartment, and the silent machine that stood like a sentinel in the corner, what she would have really liked was the option to wake Anna up right now. To wake her, and take her hand, and lead her up to the hill where they would stand and face the end of the world then and there, together.

Unfortunately, Anna wouldn't have lasted the trip up. The air was far too toxic for a normal human to have lasted more than a few minutes. Even for Elsa now, it was getting hard to breath.

She would have to make the walk up the hill alone.

There were clues she would leave behind for Anna, of course, so that her sister could know where to go when she awoke years later, when the air was hopefully not so toxic. Her sister was sometimes a little slow on the uptake, being too energetic to be observant sometimes. Elsa would worry.

But, there was one last thing that she didn't know if was better to leave or to take with her. It was her cloak, the one she'd made all those years ago during her little rebellious stint. She never really wore it after a while - cloaks weren't really that practical to work in. But in the latter years, on those special days, she and Anna would sometimes roll themselves into it and lie on the ground, wrapped around each other.

She thought about taking it with her, so that at least for a few last moments, on that lonely hill, she could hold it tight to her breast and just... pretend.

It was tempting, but in the end, she thought better of it and lay it down onto the floor. A final clue and maybe a comfort to Anna when she would wake years later, most likely confused as to where her sister had went.

Everything had been done for Anna after all. And Elsa saw no reason to change that.

* * *

The ash was an aftermath of the burning. The pale leftovers from the fiery red that had raged through the continents. Time had passed enough that the air didn't singe the skin as it blew past, so hot that even Elsa had exerted much power protecting herself against the heat.

But it wasn't yet long enough that Elsa could pretend that the ash was snow.

The sky and the landscape wasn't beautiful. They looked like they had been covered in death, and essentially, that was what it really was.

But Elsa closed her eyes, and in her mind, she thought back of a day of snow and light, of a breath-taking landscape and of a promise.

She smiled.

It was a little odd. They had experimented a bit, but the real thing felt entirely different. She could feel the cells in her body change, stiffening more and more as the chill spread up her limbs, closer and closer to her heart. She wondered if this was what Anna usually felt when they froze her. Elsa supposed that it probably was so.

She opened her eyes, and though the sky was dark, she knew hope.

A blast of warm air blew against an ice statue standing atop of the hill overlooking the valley. It was the statue of a beautiful lady, her eyes staring out into the horizon, her arm outstretched as if waiting for her someone to take it.

And there, at the end of the world, Elsa would wait.

For however long it would take.


End file.
